Speaker 1: On a street shaded by big redwood trees on the
Speaker 1: east side of Mountain View, California. White McGhee is inspecting
Speaker 1: parked r vs. He's a police sergeant here a wealthy
Speaker 1: town that same to Google one of the world's richest corporations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can see and see how this all the
Speaker 1: debris are on the windshield, the spider webs. I'll do
Speaker 1: my marking and I know what time you know that
Speaker 1: I've been here in general, right, And we give a
Speaker 1: lot of leeway. We don't come like on the hour
Speaker 1: of the third day. We actually typically give it like
Speaker 1: a fourth day. Um, and I'll come back and check
Speaker 1: on it and see if it's abandoned. Sergey McGee spends
Speaker 1: a lot of his time knocking on the doors of
Speaker 1: hundreds of our v's, lining the city streets, logging license plates,
Speaker 1: and marking wigs that haven't moved for several days. Yeah. Way,
Speaker 1: and this one's unmarked. Yeah, this carter has been marked.
Speaker 1: And then we'll go from there. We'll try to contact
Speaker 1: the person and warn him. And now we're get a
Speaker 1: ticket with and riding it's tobole. They get two of
Speaker 1: those typically before we we tell although we do allier,
Speaker 1: you know, authority that to the first time. That's the
Speaker 1: last thing we want to do. These vehicles aren't abandoned
Speaker 1: their people's homes. Mountain View is the center of Silicon
Speaker 1: Valleys tech boom, and it's minting millionaires almost by the hour.
Speaker 1: But the byproduct of all this new wealth is that
Speaker 1: thousands of people are being forced to live in our
Speaker 1: vs across San Francisco and the Broader Bay Area because
Speaker 1: rent and house prices have risen so high. Living in
Speaker 1: an r V used to be a cool life hack
Speaker 1: for a few iconoclastic Googlers, extending the Silicon value myth
Speaker 1: of sleeping under your desk and working out of a garage.
Speaker 1: Now it's become an act of desperation and a symbol
Speaker 1: of a housing crisis that can no longer be ignored.
Speaker 1: I'm per Gatkari and I'm Alistabar. You're listening to Decrypted.
Speaker 1: A small handful of Googlers have lived in our vs
Speaker 1: on and off since the company's early days. I recently
Speaker 1: spoke to one former Google and named Matt Weaver, who
Speaker 1: did it in two thousand five. For about a year,
Speaker 1: I didn't have to live in an r V to
Speaker 1: make and me I did at least a part because
Speaker 1: of it. There I had a new kind of uh
Speaker 1: tech job in the Bay Area that I was doing
Speaker 1: perfectly fine at um and lived in an RV in
Speaker 1: non fall parts tipally to say that I had done
Speaker 1: such a thing, it was a fun thing. Back then,
Speaker 1: Google was a newly public company with about five thousand employees,
Speaker 1: and Facebook wasn't much more than a dorm um project.
Speaker 1: Since then, things have changed dramatically. Google now has roughly
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand full time staff and tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of temporary and contract workers, and Facebook, which is headquartered
Speaker 1: just a few miles to the north, has about thirty
Speaker 1: five thousand employees. Then there's Uber, Lift, Airbnb, Palanteer, PayPal LinkedIn.
Speaker 1: The list goes on. Nowhere near enough housing has been
Speaker 1: built to keep up, so home prices and rents have soared,
Speaker 1: and the result is thousands of people living in r
Speaker 1: v's in towns all over Silicon Valley. If I look
Speaker 1: at this road, if you just count with the naked eye,
Speaker 1: it's one, two, three for five, six, seven, kind of eight.
Speaker 1: But then if if you include these ones, that's it's funny.
Speaker 1: I counted about fifty in and around Google's campus on
Speaker 1: the eastern edge of Mountain View. The city has logged
Speaker 1: almost three hundred Palo Alto, Berkeley and other Bay Area
Speaker 1: towns of similar numbers. The r vs are usually white
Speaker 1: or beige, and they either parked along leafy residential streets
Speaker 1: lined with detached suburban houses, or they're tucked away near
Speaker 1: office pocks. Hi, I'm sorry to bother. The knocked on
Speaker 1: the door of a cute ranch style house and one
Speaker 1: long time resident was at home, so we chatted for
Speaker 1: about half an hour on his front porch. Across the street.
Speaker 1: There are about ten RVs. Nice guy works over at Google,
Speaker 1: comes over, shakes my hand, says Hi, offers me a beer.
Speaker 1: He's just going to be living out of it. Girlfriend
Speaker 1: would come by at four o'clock and go up on
Speaker 1: top and do sunbathing. We always joked it is what
Speaker 1: it is, and and that was that of all of
Speaker 1: the r vs. Maybe that's of what it is. The other, however,
Speaker 1: is a pure um and everyone has the same tagline.
Speaker 1: It's too expensive here for them to get um, you know,
Speaker 1: the house or an apartment or whatever it is. He
Speaker 1: sounds like he's accepted the situation, but he's had mixed
Speaker 1: feelings about the RVs for some time. Google keeps taking
Speaker 1: care of my home value. It keeps going up. Thank
Speaker 1: you Google, But um, you know with that you don't
Speaker 1: want the crime. I gotta. I got a kid. This year,
Speaker 1: tensions between homeowners and the people living in the r
Speaker 1: vs has boiled over. In March, the nearby community of
Speaker 1: Berkeley voted to ban RV parking on public streets, and
Speaker 1: a few weeks later, Mountain View followed with a ban
Speaker 1: of its own. In the lead up to that vote
Speaker 1: in b a city council meeting devolved into a screaming match.
Speaker 1: Would you like us to discuss the r V item
Speaker 1: or not? Would you like us to discuss the RB
Speaker 1: item or not? There's so much anst around this issue
Speaker 1: right now. One day, when I was looking at a
Speaker 1: local news website, I spotted a comment from a Mountain
Speaker 1: View resident which said stop feeding the bears, as in
Speaker 1: the r V dwellers are bears that should be removed.
Speaker 1: So I set out to talk to our V dwellers
Speaker 1: and hear their stories. What I found, of course, is
Speaker 1: that they're not animals. Despite what that amount of View
Speaker 1: isn't wrote. They're often well educated, hard working people who
Speaker 1: would be living in a comfortable apartment or small house
Speaker 1: in almost any other part of the US. Mountain View
Speaker 1: officials have checked the data, and contrary to the perception
Speaker 1: of some homeowners, there's no evidence that our V dwellers
Speaker 1: are committing crimes at a higher rate than other residents. Still,
Speaker 1: Googlers who live in our vs are keeping a low
Speaker 1: profile these days. I put letters on windshields of about
Speaker 1: twenty r vs around the company's headquarters campus asking them
Speaker 1: to get in touch. There's sometimes a telltale sign they
Speaker 1: work for the Internet giant. You can often see one
Speaker 1: of those multicolored Google bikes part next to an RV,
Speaker 1: so the inhabitant can jump on and cycle to the office.
Speaker 1: Put my letter there as well. There we go. The
Speaker 1: thing to do is you pop it under the windscreen wiper,
Speaker 1: rather than obviously knock on the door and disturbed them.
Speaker 1: Is only in the morning right now, so people probably
Speaker 1: haven't got up yet. A few days later I got
Speaker 1: an email from an anonymous address. It said, our group
Speaker 1: tries to stay discreet avoiding media inquiries, but we understand
Speaker 1: the importance of having our narrative told I recommend you
Speaker 1: reach out to Van Dweller's at Google dot com. When
Speaker 1: I emailed that official company address, I got no reply.
Speaker 1: There is a Googler who calls himself Brandon S who's
Speaker 1: been blogging about his experiences, but he tends to focus
Speaker 1: more on financial planning advice, such as how to buy
Speaker 1: a house elsewhere while you save money living in a
Speaker 1: vehicle in Silicon Valley. And he didn't want to talk
Speaker 1: to us for this podcast, but I was able to
Speaker 1: talk to other people currently living in r v's. On
Speaker 1: a sunny spring afternoon, I met up with a guy
Speaker 1: called Sam about a hundred yards from Google's headquarters. Hello,
Speaker 1: how are you? Sam's forty one and he spent most
Speaker 1: of his career in I T but he currently drives
Speaker 1: for Lift. His wife, Linda, works at a big drug
Speaker 1: development company in Silicon Valley. Sam looks like any other
Speaker 1: tech nerd. He had a sharp haircut, wore trendy jacket
Speaker 1: and expensive jeans, and he rode up to me on
Speaker 1: an electric scooter with a high end action camera attached
Speaker 1: to his chest. Scooter. Yeah, runs, that's pretty cool, I
Speaker 1: think so. Uh so you live around around here? Well
Speaker 1: in the r v s, So yeah, on literally on
Speaker 1: this road or um. Some days we're right now, just
Speaker 1: on the other side, um over between, like the Yahoo building,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, the YouTube building and the Google Maps forget
Speaker 1: the Sam and Linda used to own a house in Sacramento,
Speaker 1: but they sold and moved when Ninda got that new job.
Speaker 1: Once they arrived, they found out they couldn't afford rent.
Speaker 1: This is despite a combined income of roughly a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year. In most places, you live like
Speaker 1: a king on that, but here it's very hard to
Speaker 1: make ends meet if you want to also build rainy
Speaker 1: day savings, as we're all told we're supposed to do,
Speaker 1: And we just did the math when we were, you know,
Speaker 1: renting a room and we could kind of stay afloat,
Speaker 1: but there's no way to save any money for retirement
Speaker 1: or the future at all. We just be floating and
Speaker 1: then at some point rent prices will go beyond our
Speaker 1: ability to pay. Turns out living without a permanent address
Speaker 1: is complicated. We agreed to change Sam and Linda's names
Speaker 1: because they're afraid that if Linda's employer find out she
Speaker 1: lives in an RV she'll be fired. It's a very
Speaker 1: gray area living out of a out of an rv UM.
Speaker 1: There's big litigation on whether or not it's even legal
Speaker 1: to live out of an RV and have a bank
Speaker 1: account and things like this. So once you become homeless,
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to become unhomeless. That's because if you
Speaker 1: don't have a traditional address, it's impossible to get landlord
Speaker 1: references to rent a home, and it's trickier to arrange
Speaker 1: a mortgage if you want to buy. Sam and Linda
Speaker 1: had to talk to a lawyer about how to keep
Speaker 1: their bank accounts and retirement savings accounts. Financial regulations mean
Speaker 1: banks usually want a residential address for account holders, and
Speaker 1: pier boxes are frowned upon. Technically, they can see our
Speaker 1: accounts and and there go out. I did I did
Speaker 1: not think of that, uh E trade accounts, All of
Speaker 1: that would could technically go by by if we did not,
Speaker 1: if we were not very careful about how we did this.
Speaker 1: Sam didn't want to go into more detail because he's
Speaker 1: concerned about losing access to their accounts. Now that they've
Speaker 1: been in this situation for at least a year, he's
Speaker 1: torn about whether they should have made the move to
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley at all. It's a mixed blessing living. I mean,
Speaker 1: who wants to live half homeless? I mean it's as
Speaker 1: as much as it can look glamorous online, it comes
Speaker 1: as its own problems. Sam struggles in particular with the
Speaker 1: neighborhood tensions. It's not easy knowing homeowners don't want you around.
Speaker 1: I would imagine if I paid two million dollars for
Speaker 1: a house, I'm not in a hurry to see somebody
Speaker 1: living out in a r V out on the street either,
Speaker 1: you know, so I people pay very high property taxes
Speaker 1: here and to see people kind of skirting that, I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's that's not making people excited about about their neighbors. Plus,
Speaker 1: Sam doesn't work at Google, so he can't enjoy company
Speaker 1: perks like showers that make it a lot easier for
Speaker 1: employees to live in an RVY. The Google employees that
Speaker 1: everything subsidized for them, food, laundry, anything they could possibly want,
Speaker 1: which is why they can downsize totally do a van.
Speaker 1: It's one stop shop for them. For some people, it's
Speaker 1: it's a stepping stone. For some people it's a it's
Speaker 1: a trap. I wanted to get a better sense for
Speaker 1: what life is like for people living in r vs
Speaker 1: without Google providing toilet, showers, food, and laundry. So I
Speaker 1: spent an afternoon with another RV resident, Paul Kastner. So
Speaker 1: you want to give me a tour? Sure, Um, this
Speaker 1: is the living room. Paul has spent his career in tech,
Speaker 1: including a recent stint at a semiconductor equipment supplier as
Speaker 1: a quality engineer. The company cut staff, including Paul, and
Speaker 1: now he's looking for a new job and surviving in
Speaker 1: an RV. Got a couch that folds down into a bed,
Speaker 1: a couple of chairs. Um, I'm a musician, so I
Speaker 1: have a nice speaker system here with and can listen
Speaker 1: listen to songs. Um, that's cool, yeah, all right. And
Speaker 1: then kind of kitchen here. Kitchen I think of it
Speaker 1: like a European kitchen. It's got everything that anybody here has,
Speaker 1: but just like tiny bit smaller inside, Like got a
Speaker 1: stove and I think, umallon tank in the back, uh,
Speaker 1: and then two tanks by the way. That lapping sound
Speaker 1: in the background was Paul's dog, Bandit, who was very friendly,
Speaker 1: and I was impressed by the way Paul made use
Speaker 1: of his small space, but it did smell musty, I
Speaker 1: have to say, and dealing with sewage seemed difficult to
Speaker 1: There's a service center about eight miles north where Paul
Speaker 1: can go to emptiest tanks and refill with fresh water.
Speaker 1: The other option is to use a hose to empty
Speaker 1: the waist directly into the sewer system through sewer cleanouts
Speaker 1: on the street. Paul says that goes to the same
Speaker 1: place everyone else's waist goes. But ultimately Paul's main challenge
Speaker 1: is the same as sounds. Your neighbors don't like you,
Speaker 1: or they're even scared of you, And for the people
Speaker 1: living in r v's it's about to get worse. In March,
Speaker 1: Berkeley band r vs from parking overnight, Pacifica, East Palo Alto,
Speaker 1: and other Bay Area towns have enacted limits as well.
Speaker 1: At the end of March, mountain View voted to do
Speaker 1: the same. It's unclear when this band will kick in,
Speaker 1: but it's coming. At a mountain View city meeting in March,
Speaker 1: several residents and our redwellers blame big tech companies for
Speaker 1: indirectly raising prices and not doing enough to fix the issue.
Speaker 1: The city council was criticized to Dozens of people came
Speaker 1: with signs that read I stand with Mountain View Vehicle residents,
Speaker 1: and a group representing the people living in our vs
Speaker 1: came to speak at the event. Preventing parking and throwing
Speaker 1: more people out of our community is unconscionable. I do
Speaker 1: not want to live in a town where the only
Speaker 1: people who can afford to be here are very very rich,
Speaker 1: tech eas or very very old retirees like myself. Thank
Speaker 1: you again. This is a polarizing issue for Mountain View residents.
Speaker 1: Some people are standing up for the rights of our
Speaker 1: View residents, but other homeowners are happy about the parking bands.
Speaker 1: These are often people who were lucky enough to have
Speaker 1: bought a home many years ago. They don't want new
Speaker 1: apartment buildings marring their suburban paradise, and they get angry
Speaker 1: at the thought of affordable housing bringing poorer people to
Speaker 1: their neighborhoods. For at least a decade, this attitude has
Speaker 1: won out. Rising salaries and a growing population, combined with
Speaker 1: a limited supply of new homes, has sparked a surgeon prices.
Speaker 1: The median rent in Mountain View has almost doubled since
Speaker 1: late two thousand, ten to four thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 1: That's nearly triple the national average. The median Mountain View
Speaker 1: home value is one point eight million dollars, up from
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty thousand ten years ago. Landlords are richer,
Speaker 1: homeowners feel richer and smarter for buying early. The odd
Speaker 1: homeless person on the street could easily be ignored or
Speaker 1: explained away as a product of poor life choices. The
Speaker 1: r V explosion is changing all of this. When cities
Speaker 1: cracked down, r V dwellers usually move on to the
Speaker 1: next town and hope for the best. But now that
Speaker 1: many towns and limiting parking, it's unclear where all these
Speaker 1: people will go. I spoke to Jennifer Loving, the CEO
Speaker 1: of a group called Destination Home, which is trying to
Speaker 1: reduce homelessness in Santa Clara County, where Mountain View is located.
Speaker 1: She blames the lack of affordable housing for low income workers.
Speaker 1: She said, this type of real estate isn't as profitable
Speaker 1: for developers who would rather build mcmansion's for wealthy tech workers.
Speaker 1: We have rising rents, we have gentrification, we have people
Speaker 1: being displaced, and and all of that together is creating
Speaker 1: an untenable situation for thousands and thousands of families and
Speaker 1: individuals that are trying to live and work here in
Speaker 1: this community. I also spoke to Alison Hicks, one of
Speaker 1: only two Mountain View Council members to vote against the
Speaker 1: r V parking ban. She says the tech boom happens
Speaker 1: so quickly that residents are struggling to adjust to the
Speaker 1: fact that they now live in a densely populated area
Speaker 1: with different needs. A hundred years ago, this area was
Speaker 1: farm land. It was the valley of heart to Delight.
Speaker 1: After post war it became a suburb, and now we're
Speaker 1: becoming a more urban place. Urban places have problems that
Speaker 1: suburban and rural places down. So this is the reason
Speaker 1: Sergeant McGee spent so much time driving around Mountain View
Speaker 1: keeping track of our V dwellers and offering them support,
Speaker 1: warning them of the coming parking band, and pushing people
Speaker 1: to sign up for what little affordable housing is available
Speaker 1: right now. And there are other worrying signs too. When
Speaker 1: I rode along with Sergeant McGee one recent afternoon and
Speaker 1: our V resident ran away from us, we jumped in
Speaker 1: the police car and quickly caught up with him. Sergeant
Speaker 1: McGee found what he suspected was meth and fetamine on
Speaker 1: this person. So what do you do now, I'm again
Speaker 1: I can bug him to take a big problem, um
Speaker 1: buck m but he's going to come right out. So
Speaker 1: he lives in that RV right where that canvass very
Speaker 1: painted a citation go to court. And then there's that
Speaker 1: sewage issue. Sergean McKee stopped to inspect one r the
Speaker 1: that had brown liquid leaking from an outlet pipe near
Speaker 1: the rear wheel. And we've again complaints about this one
Speaker 1: leaking sewage and I just haven't got it with leaking.
Speaker 1: You can see there's dried something underneath it. But you
Speaker 1: can see the duct tape and say the cap that's
Speaker 1: that's the reservoir for the sewage. So it's you can
Speaker 1: see you see where it's darker right underneath it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can see where it's it's been dripping. The sergeant
Speaker 1: tested the slowly growing pool to prove it was human waste.
Speaker 1: It was, and he got serious with the people living
Speaker 1: in the vehicle. A self driving car world passed as
Speaker 1: he lectured the two residents. So you guys need to
Speaker 1: take care of it like a SAP, so we're supposed
Speaker 1: to there's a new ordinance for towing like we're supposed
Speaker 1: to it. I'm not gonna towd today, but tomorrow if
Speaker 1: I come out here and it's like this, it's getting towed,
Speaker 1: all right. So you've been notified so early after all
Speaker 1: your reporting on this. What was your sense about how
Speaker 1: people are feeling about the issue. Do they think tech
Speaker 1: companies should be doing more? Yeah? Most people I heard
Speaker 1: from think think Google, another big tech company, should really
Speaker 1: step up more than they've done so far, and in
Speaker 1: the short term they should at least make some of
Speaker 1: their big parking lots available so are the owners can
Speaker 1: park pretty safely overnight. What about this concept, you know,
Speaker 1: this historical concept of the company town which auto companies,
Speaker 1: mining companies have done in the past, where they not
Speaker 1: only build housing directly for their workers, but in some
Speaker 1: cases whole towns. Yeah. I've spoken to someone who's familiar
Speaker 1: with Google's thinking on this, and they said the Internet
Speaker 1: Giant is not at all interested in becoming a residential
Speaker 1: home builder or like a major landlord for staff, and
Speaker 1: it's actually, unfortunately unlikely to make car parks available for
Speaker 1: RV parking either. Google officially declined to comment for this story,
Speaker 1: but they did point me to an interview one of
Speaker 1: their public policy managers did. She's Rebecca pros And and and
Speaker 1: she spoke to PBS back in two thousand sixteen. Obviously,
Speaker 1: our footprint creates pressure, creates pressure on housing and transportation.
Speaker 1: But that pressure isn't just tech. It's not just Google.
Speaker 1: It is all the industries that are creating the economy
Speaker 1: of the Bay Area. We all have to work together
Speaker 1: to figure out what we are going to look like
Speaker 1: and how we're going to live. Alie, I mean, she's
Speaker 1: right that this isn't solely Google's problem to deal with,
Speaker 1: but it is true that most of the wealth created
Speaker 1: in the last few years has come from the tech industry.
Speaker 1: So I wonder is there a push for Google and
Speaker 1: other tech companies to pay more in local taxes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a general feeling, including from that guy in Mountain
Speaker 1: View that we spoke to, the resident, that the industry
Speaker 1: isn't paying enough tax on their huge profits that they make.
Speaker 1: But Google is giving money to a lot of organizations
Speaker 1: to tackle these issues. It's also got a very big
Speaker 1: plan to invest millions and millions of dollars in an
Speaker 1: area called North Bay Shore, which is nearby it's headquarters.
Speaker 1: And this will add thousands of homes, including about of
Speaker 1: homes in that plan that will be affordable housing. It's
Speaker 1: definitely encouraging that Google could help to create thousands of
Speaker 1: new homes through that plan. But I can't help thinking
Speaker 1: Google is a company that has more than a hundred
Speaker 1: billion dollars in cash on its balance sheet, so still
Speaker 1: even after those millions are donated, it's a bit like
Speaker 1: you or I giving ten dollars to a homeless person
Speaker 1: we pass on the street. And that housing advocate Jennifer
Speaker 1: Loving that we spoke to, she thinks the North Bay
Speaker 1: Shore plan should include a lot more affordable housing. She said,
Speaker 1: is nowhere near enough to solve this problem. And then
Speaker 1: of course you also have to think about the fact
Speaker 1: that it's not just about money. You know, Google could
Speaker 1: in theory throw a million billions and billions of dollars,
Speaker 1: not millions of dollars, but you need the political will
Speaker 1: as well, so people who live in these areas that
Speaker 1: they actually have to want to help their neighbors. And
Speaker 1: when push comes to shove sometimes you know that doesn't
Speaker 1: happen so if it does take time, maybe year is
Speaker 1: to really address this issue. Do you think there's a
Speaker 1: risk that the whole situation could escalate if it's allowed
Speaker 1: to fester. Yeah. I think there are a couple of risks,
Speaker 1: And the first one was was put pretty well by
Speaker 1: Allison Hicks, who was that Mountain View council member we
Speaker 1: spoke to. Her point is that if regular people can't
Speaker 1: afford to live here, the fabric of the society breaks down.
Speaker 1: So if you think of teachers, chefs, trash collectors, baristas,
Speaker 1: those types of people, these are people who make everyone's
Speaker 1: community function properly. And if these people are pushed further
Speaker 1: and further way, it's going to become a strange city
Speaker 1: and especially very hard for those people. And you can't
Speaker 1: have a town that functions if we only have tech
Speaker 1: workers living in it. Just even if you have no
Speaker 1: compassion for people themselves, you know, it won't be a
Speaker 1: functioning city as I know it. It wouldn't be a
Speaker 1: city that I would want to live in. And the
Speaker 1: second issue could be even more of a risk, and
Speaker 1: that's that tech companies could go elsewhere. So in February,
Speaker 1: the Google CEO summed up pitch I he announced a
Speaker 1: plan to spend thirteen billion dollars and that would go
Speaker 1: on new offices and data centers. And a lot of
Speaker 1: this was outside Silicon Valley, and that's almost becoming a trend.
Speaker 1: We know Amazon has decided to do the same thing
Speaker 1: as well, expanding outside of Seattle after housing and infrastructure
Speaker 1: has come under a lot of strain in that city. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and when pushed on this type of thing,
Speaker 1: tech executives who are based around here, you know they'll
Speaker 1: blame it. They won't blame it directly on on this
Speaker 1: homeless crisis or the housing problem, but they'll basically say,
Speaker 1: you know that the amounts we have to pay for
Speaker 1: smart for smart engineers is just way, way high, and
Speaker 1: you know the reason. The reason is because it costs
Speaker 1: so much to live here. And just going back to
Speaker 1: sergeant McGee, did you ask him Ali how he feels
Speaker 1: about all of this. Yeah, we got into it a
Speaker 1: bit when my ride along with him ended. I asked
Speaker 1: basically whether the r V wave will ultimately be solved,
Speaker 1: and he looked pretty tired as he thought about the answer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know, the way things are going, I don't
Speaker 1: see how it's all going to disappear. I mean, where
Speaker 1: are we going to put everyone? You know, there's not
Speaker 1: enough housing at the moment. After a twelve hour day,
Speaker 1: he had a long drive ahead to get home because
Speaker 1: he can't afford to live in Mountain View. And that's
Speaker 1: it for this week's episode of Decrypted. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: If you live in a city where house prices have
Speaker 1: been affected by the tech boom, I would love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can write to us at Decrypted
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. Well, I'm on Twitter at Alistair
Speaker 1: m bar and I'm at piagad Cary and please help
Speaker 1: us spread the word about our show by leaving us
Speaker 1: a racing or a review wherever you like to listen
Speaker 1: to podcasts. This episode was produced by Pierge Cary and
Speaker 1: Lindsey Cratterwell. Our story editor was Emily Buso. Thank you
Speaker 1: also to Aki Ito and Vander May and Brad Stone.
Speaker 1: Francesco Levi, his head of Bomberg Podcast. We'll see you
Speaker 1: next week.